Why can't more books look like these?

I don't understand why we haven't yet seen an early-seventies mass-market retro paperback cover trend. To wit:



(Click for a larger image.)

I've written here before about my desire to be published in mass-market format--to be, once and for all, fully back-pocketable. But the other part of my love for this format is the work that went into the cover art, back in the MM heyday. In general, I dislike photographs on fiction book covers--indeed, my favorite two of my own book covers (Mailman and the US version of Pieces For The Left Hand) are the only ones with no photos on them, and the most retro in intent. A photograph implants itself in your head; it detracts from the invention your mind has to make when reading. The covers above are interpretive, not representational; they spark the imagination.

Occasionally a new book comes out that seems to follow this aesthetic, one that wears a beard proudly, a beard that is just now beginning to be flecked with gray. The new Lydia Davis collected stories is one--pictures don't do it justice, it's simply a beautiful, beautiful literary artifact.

And of course there is nothing worse than the movie tie-in cover, complete with photos of the actors in dramatic poses, or their photoshopped faces hovering in the air over a burning house, or some such horseshit. "You better check out the movie first," these covers seem to say.

So what do you think, people? Are you with me? As long as we've got the seventies economy, can't we have the book covers, too?

By its cover

I had the pleasant experience this week of seeing some first-draft mockups of the cover of my forthcoming novel (this isn't a promotional blog, but I doubt I'll be able to resist an announcement when it comes out next year...you've been warned). They looked good--my editor and I made a few suggestions and sent them back for another round.

But aside from being pleased that the whole publication process was underway, I felt kind of odd. I've felt this oddness before, with my other book covers, and I feel it whenever a favorite book of mine is reissued, with a new cover.

We're often told not to judge a book by its cover--the old cliche, of course, means that we shouldn't judge things by their surface. But the fact is, we DO judge books by their covers. Walking into a bookstore is deeply meta for me--having been through the publishing wringer half a dozen times, I'm hyper-aware of the ways in which publishers are attempting to entice me to pick up their books. But this doesn't immunize me from those enticements. I absolutely pick up books with interesting covers, and should I go on to read those books, the images on the covers will color, however subtly, the way I read them.

So the oddness I refer to is the oddness of seeing a cover after I already know the book--and feeling as though it doesn't quite fit. In the case of my forthcoming book, I've had a cover in mind for about a year, and although my publisher asked what kind of cover I wanted (a rare privilege, I can tell you), and more or less listened to what I said, the cover the book will eventually have will not be quite right. It can't be. Even if I designed it myself, it wouldn't be right--because the cover I have in mind has hidden depths. It's layered, magically, almost. It can't exist.

Occasionally a book I've read will come out as a reprint, and I won't like the new cover at all. What I generally feel at this point is betrayal. A novel is different from, say, a movie, in at least one important way: because it's nothing but text--that is, a series of symbols with no inherent meaning--it depends upon its reader to create the story it tells entirely in her head. I think this is one of the reasons people have such deep, abiding, sentimental attachments to books--because they feel a book is their book. And it is, because they made it themselves.

And so, any kind of visual representation of a book--a cover image, say--feels like some kind of an insult. No, no, you want to say--it's not that way, it's this way. This is even more true when you wrote the damned thing. Have you ever heard a writer say, of his or her book, "Don't you love the cover? I think it's awesome." This is a rare occurrence, to be sure. No matter how good the cover is, it's wrong somehow--too dark, too cute, too busy, too spare, to bland, too designed.

The converse, as I mentioned, is when you see the cover first, and then come to associate the book with it. Infinite Jest, that's one, for me. All of Salinger's books, with their little stripes and distinctive typeface. The blocky, kind of awful illustrations on the covers of Rick DeMarinis's novels and story collections. Lorrie Moore's Birds of America. The Norton critical editions of classic literature, with those old-school one-color illustrations. Penguin Classics. The New Yorker. All the Audubon Society Field Guides. It is the habit, these days, of commercial publishers to have one cover for the hardcover edition, and another for the paperback, presumably to win a different audience the second time around. But do they ever wonder how the first audience feels? The one who already read the book, and now are being told that everything they believed in was just a lie?!?

In a perfect world, every book would have the same blank cover, with the title and author printed on it in the same typeface; and we would all make our judgements by reading the first couple of pages. Then again, maybe that's not a perfect world. Maybe that's a boring-as-shit world--a world in which everybody would beeline right out of the bookstore and go feast their eyes on some flowers, or video games, or other people.

Other people: that's the right metaphor. A book cover is like a pretty dress (or whatever garment floats your boat) that you can't wait to get underneath. And then, when your lover leaves you, and you see her wearing something new, ah!, the pain! Those reprints aren't for you--they're for someone else. Damn those covers! Jezebels! Judases! That's my story you're tarting up!

Book By Its Cover

Quickie post here--from the comments of this post, Burl Veneer informs us of a blog, Book By Its Cover, that features lots of lovely lit pr0n. The entire first page consists of beautiful stuff I have never seen in my life...I've added it to our blogroll. Thanks a lot, Bill!

The Assistant Apprentice's Wife

May I respectfully inquire as to what's up with all the factota? It seems to me that the publishing industry's affair with assistants, apprentices, and wives is still going strong, and those of us who notice these things are beginning to wonder if we're seeing a creeping genrefication of literary fiction, whereby the only kind of character (predominantly female) anybody wants to read about is one who is subservient to somebody else. Rhian and I are fond of making up joke literary blockbuster titles, and over the years have come up with The Pornographer's Accountant, The Cousin's Wife, The Roommate's Psychiatrist, and The Limnologist's Analyst.

There is hope, however, as books like The Catastrophist have of late been piling up on publisher-bribed new trade tables at chain stores all over America--our protagonists (aha!) are getting some agency at last, and all of us are hunkered at our laptops, isting the night away. Here are a few titles you can have, for your literary romance, if you like: The Marriagist. The Friendist. The Pregnantist. The Boyfriendizer.

And while I'm all up in it here, can we have a moratorium on book covers that depict a photograph of an idle woman? Lying on a sofa, except with the back to the camera, or the head turned away, or cut off. Or sprawled in the grass, or lounging in a tree. And the subset of individual-body-part covers, let's jettison them too: all the shod feet (pumped feet, I guess, to be more specific) pressed modestly together, and all the hands holding flowers. Please, just once, I would like to see a cover upon which a woman is kicking somebody's ass, or injecting some insulin, or opening a bottle of beer. Instead what we get is waiting. Waiting, and looking pretty. Readers, what are you thinking when you pick these books up? "Oh, look--demure people! This one's for me."

I don't know if I get to say this, being a guy and all. But I think the publishing industry is addicted to rewarding writers who present women in a passive context, and to celebrating feminine attractiveness and good taste over intellectual ambition. Otherwise it would be Lydia Davis, Joanna Scott, Kathryn Davis, Barbara Gowdy, and Kelly Link you tripped over trying to get to the public restrooms at Borders, wouldn't it?

The Worst Covers Ever

I suppose the main purpose of the cover of a romance novel is to stand out from the other books on the rack, so the fact that the position of the (presumable) woman on this one is well-nigh impossible is actually a benefit -- you can't help staring and staring at it. You can find more here. The year 2004 seemed to be a banner one for screechingly funny bad covers.